Commitment to Our Communities

Solar Turbines supports the communities where its employees live and work through a number of financial and volunteer contributions. Many employees participate in volunteer activities and boast thousands of volunteer hours every year. Activities include cleaning up local parks and beaches, mentoring homeless students, painting neighborhood community centers, donating food and clothing, and more. Other employees support local charities through United Way payroll deductions. The following are some examples of Solar's community involvement in the San Diego area:

Hands On San Diego
Hands On San Diego is an annual weeklong celebration of community charity. Every September, Solar’s employee team joins with more than 5,000 volunteers from of San Diego's businesses, military personnel, families and friends, to participate in key service projects.

United Way
Through annual payroll deductions and one-time gifts, employees are given the option of making financial gifts to the United Way. Many of these donations are earmarked for specific non-profit agencies, while others are deposited into the non-profit organization’s general fund to be distributed to the member agencies that need it most.

Christmas Fund
Through the employee-sponsored Christmas Fund, Solar has been able to brighten the holiday season for thousands of kids, families and seniors. Once a year, employees make one-time donations to this special account, and the money is allocated (by the Christmas Fund Committee) to select charities across San Diego County.

Corporate Giving
Together, Solar and Caterpillar give approximately $1 million to local charities every year. Recipients include (but are not limited to) United Way, Volunteer San Diego, YWCA & YMCA, San Diego Science Alliance, Neighborhood House Association, Society for Women Engineers, Chicano Federation, Salvation Army, San Diego Food Bank, San Diego Earth Works, San Diego City Schools, and more.

Caterpillar and Solar support the concept of sustainable development as defined by a United Nations commission as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." All of Solar's facilities place high priority on environmental health and safety performance. High priority areas include Pollution Prevention and Waste Reduction, and many of Solar's facilities have received awards for safety and environmental management. Solar maintains a leadership position with its SoLoNOx™ dry low emission (DLE) technology that significantly reduces nitrogen oxide emissions, a contributor to smog. Solar's effectiveness in providing new pollution-prevention technology into the marketplace was confirmed through a Department of Energy (DOE) grant to develop the next generation of high-efficiency, low-emission industrial gas turbines.